Steady translation of a chemically active viscous drop along a rigid wall

Abstract

Chemically active drops release a chemical solute, gradients in whose concentration cause interfacial flows that advect the emitted solute. This non-linear coupling between solute distribution and fluid flow causes the drop to swim via an advective instability, if the system's Peclet number Pe--ratio of advective-to-diffusive solute transport--is larger than a finite threshold. Theoretical analyses often model active drops as diffusiophoresis-driven active particles, primarily to simplify the implementation of boundary conditions at the drop surface. However, physical insights about drop motion that rely on this simplification risk having limited applicability to fluid drops, especially when the drop is interacting chemo-hydrodynamically with its environment. Towards this, we study here the translation of a chemically active viscous drop parallel to a rigid wall, as an example of a common experimental configuration. We consider a propulsion mechanism where the drop swims due to interfacial Marangoni stresses and diffusiophoretic flows, and compare our results to those of the ''isotropic active particle'' model, to examine the validity of the latter. Our analysis shows that, for the same confining force, a less viscous drop swims closer to the wall than a more viscous drop. This results in faster swimming, due to stronger concentration gradients driving the drop's motion. It is also shown that for moderate Pe, the swimming speed of the drop depends weakly on its mobility ratio (relative strength of diffusiophoretic and Marangoni flows). This weak dependence provides a quantitative justification for studying diffusiophoresis-driven active particles to infer the motion of Marangoni-stress-driven active drops.